When is enough, enough, or how to get off the bandwagon??

[NorthStar]

i think that many audiophiles with what i will call 'mature' systems are quite satisfied with where they are, and even more importantly, the direction they have gone in. these people have reached a level where they are not looking for 90 degree turns, but are open to incremental improvements. they have done the 'heavy lifting' of discovery.

some are still trying to discover what they like, and the best way to achieve that.

others maybe are are not exactly aware of the point they are at on the decision tree.

personally; 8 years ago i decided to build a dedicated room. one would think that would result in a mature system. the reality was that i left a mature system in my previous home, and then spent 5-6 years trying to get back to where things were settled in the new room. i stepped back a couple of steps, to eventually get way beyond where i had been. the last couple of years it's been great and i'm enjoying the payoff of my efforts.

did i do the right thing? depends on when you ask me.

You and I are on the same page Mike. Unfortunately some people see that gear and think the sound we get is all about the gear.

What they don't see is the hard work that goes into bringing the performance as close as possible to their potential as opposed to just working. It is a process that can take a lot of time and effort, in your and my cases, as well as others here, years.

Jack,

how true.

enough is enough when it finally works. things 'lock in' and the music flows. in my case, the final pieces to the puzzle were making physical changes to my room (removing some bass trapping, and adding the Equi=tech) as well as speaker adjustments and adding some decoupling footers everywhere. the room changes were years in the making including lots of feedback and measuring. really no gear changes other than settle on a particular vinyl front end. it was just patience and being relentless. sure; i had expensive 'pretty' gear but it was getting it all to jell where the magic comes from.

Same here Mike. Pretty much all the gear remained the same for three years, some almost twice that. When your MM7s arrive you'll be in for another round of tuning. I have no doubt you will be rewarded for your efforts down the road. Such is the path of the more involved hobbyist eh? No pain no gain.

I don't have the fantastic rooms that you both guys have; but you both touched the Essence of true Audiophilia: The Room and its Balance with the Music recordings and the Music gear & loudspeakers.

And the balancing size of everything dictates the balancing size of our overall musical pleasure.
...Be it from a pair of headphones to the largest live Classical concert Hall.


---------:b

 

[JackD201]

That's right Bob. The room is usually what hobbyists have the least control over. Pull out all the stops and use whatever you have at your disposal to make things happen.I remember when I just started working. I was using towels, blankets, throw pillows, you name it! LOL. The face of my wife when she'd come home was priceless! It did work out in the long run. Suddenly the idea of a dedicated room just for me became VERY palatable for her. LOL!!!!!

 

[Mike Lavigne]

I don't have the fantastic rooms that you both guys have; but you both touched the Essence of true Audiophilia: The Room and its Balance with the Music recordings and the Music gear & loudspeakers.

And the balancing size of everything dictates the balancing size of our overall musical pleasure.
...Be it from a pair of headphones to the largest live Classical concert Hall.


---------:b

here is a picture of my old room. i was in this room for 9 years.

it was 12' x 18' x 10.5'.....so a fairly small room. but it had high ceilings and a bay window, so it had good bones. those speakers may look small, but they were 46 inches tall and weighed 575 pounds. but the room picture makes the speakers look small; in fact they are massive.

for three years i used towels and foam treatments stuck on with double back tape to figure out what sounded best. the picture shows many small pieces of fibreglass with fabric glued that i had made for wall treatments. since it was a small room and speakers were fairly large i had to do the live-end<->dead end approach with lots of absorbtion on the first reflection points. i used tube traps in the corners. the suspended wood floor was heavily braced. i had dedicated lines installed.

the room sounded great at the end but i could over-drive it easily. that is when i decided i wanted a room without limitations. what i did not realize was how much more difficult a room like that would be to tame. more portential means more things can get very wrong. this small room always had that vivid immediacy. the new room was much more difficult to get that going.....although now i have even more of that energy.

the point is that the key is to optimize what you have. i loved my old room and the music really flowed there.

 

[DaveyF]

Those are pretty neat photos Mike. I see you used to own Tenor's, which I think VERY highly of, how do you think they compare to some of the better tube amps today?

 

[Mike Lavigne]

Those are pretty neat photos Mike. I see you used to own Tenor's, which I think VERY highly of, how do you think they compare to some of the better tube amps today?

i loved the 75 watt Tenor OTL monoblock's; they had the neutrality that i love, yet they also had this fire and sparkle in the mids along with extended highs and lows. OTOH they could also explode and take out the ceramic mid-range on the Kharma's (happened to me twice).

i was the first to put Kharma and Tenor together, many others agreed with me (and joined Kharma and Tenor too) that it was a magical combination, even literally explosive sometimes.

it's still one of my favorite tube amps; maybe overall my favorite since it does not have that dark character of some other tube amps, and it's got the leading edge precision too where many tube amps blunt the musical energy. even other OTL's are either a bit dry, or a bit too colored for my taste. the Tenor was just right.

it's been 8-9 years since i've listened to these amps in a familiar system. so comparing them directly with the current crop of tube amps is difficult. but my opinion is that their performance when used on the proper speaker would be competive with most anything. but a fragile OTL on too tough a speaker load is not recommended. and they do get very hot.

i'm not sure these amps were ever a mature design and reliable. possibly that is why they sounded so good.

i progressed from this amp to the darTZeel (with a short time with Tenor Hybrid 300 monos) and i prefer the dart to the Tenors overall.

maybe the Tenor OTL's sounded in many ways like solid state, whereas the dart's sound like tubes in many ways. both sound like music.

 

[DaveyF]

Thanks, Mike. That pretty much sums up my impression of the Tenor's as well. I wasn't aware that they were fragile, but this makes sense given the amount of heat that they generate. Last pair I heard could have done dual duty as a floor heater for the whole house
BUT I have been very tempted to acquire a pair, I guess they are still on my short list, just not at the top now.

 

[rbbert]

For me, every improvement brings me one step closer to the music. The better one's system, the more one recognizes that the software-and I think this holds more for analog (tape and disc) than does digital-is far better than we previously thought. We've tapped but a fraction of the information contained in those record grooves or 15 or 30 ips tapes (and those with the 1/2 inch head stacks are even closer to the real event). Digital just does not seem to have as much of an upside as does analog. YMMV.

And yet...

Analog tape is made up of discrete iron oxide particles, and there are far fewer of them in 1/96,000th of a second (of tape) than 2 to the 24th power. Given that, it should be possible for 24/96 PCM digital to sound at least as good as 30 ips analog; just another reason I don't think the ADC > DAC process is anywhere near "transparent" yet, but I would certainly think that it could be made to best analog tape.

 

[Tonepub]

I've heard high res digital sound as good as or in a few cases even more natural than analog. But, the big problem is the software - it's just not there. For the most part a lot of what's on HD Tracks is not that great. A lot sounds suspiciously like the DVD audio file or the SACD. Can Bruce lend any info here, or will that get you in trouble?

So much of this is the mastering. I've heard 16/44.1 sound great when great care is paid to the process. Too many variables to freak out about.

 

[Mike Lavigne]

And yet...

Analog tape is made up of discrete iron oxide particles, and there are far fewer of them in 1/96,000th of a second (of tape) than 2 to the 24th power. Given that, it should be possible for 24/96 PCM digital to sound at least as good as 30 ips analog; just another reason I don't think the ADC > DAC process is anywhere near "transparent" yet, but I would certainly think that it could be made to best analog tape.

have you listened to high quality master tape dubs even at 1/4" 15ips compared to 24/96 PCM?

i will leave the scientific investigation into the physical media of magnetic tape compared to PCM digital to others. but there really is not much of a comparison between the performance of these two formats. i have 100 or so 15ips 1/4' master dubs and a few thousand 24/96 or higher PCM files which i've used to form my opinion. a few of these digital files are the direct copies of the original digital masters.

if you have listening experience or some evidance which backs up your SWAG that 'it could be made to best analog tape' then please tell us about it.

I've heard high res digital sound as good as or in a few cases even more natural than analog. But, the big problem is the software - it's just not there. For the most part a lot of what's on HD Tracks is not that great. A lot sounds suspiciously like the DVD audio file or the SACD. Can Bruce lend any info here, or will that get you in trouble?

So much of this is the mastering. I've heard 16/44.1 sound great when great care is paid to the process. Too many variables to freak out about.

no; the big problem is not the software, it's the format. PCM was concieved to be 'good enough'; not to better analog.

OTOH i totally agree that PCM even redbook 16/44 can sound great. it can be and is very good.

if we are going to go down this familiar road we should really start our own thread about it. or maybe just reference any of 10 other threads here on this subject and just go listen to music with the adult beverage of our choice.

 

[Tonepub]

Mike, I agree with you on the format, what I meant was there isn't as much great software that is readily available on the high res digital side.

You, like a handful of us either in the industry or with other connections, have access to "goodies" that many audiophiles don't. I wish it was more available.

Agreed on the further discussion over a beverage! We need MORE of that!

 

[rbbert]

have you listened to high quality master tape dubs even at 1/4" 15ips compared to 24/96 PCM?

i will leave the scientific investigation into the physical media of magnetic tape compared to PCM digital to others. but there really is not much of a comparison between the performance of these two formats. i have 100 or so 15ips 1/4' master dubs and a few thousand 24/96 or higher PCM files which i've used to form my opinion. a few of these digital files are the direct copies of the original digital masters.

if you have listening experience or some evidance which backs up your SWAG that 'it could be made to best analog tape' then please tell us about it.

Boy did you misread my post! My point was that 24/96 PCM digital done right should equal or better any existing analog recording format, but doesn't. It's not transparent, even though there is every reason (theoretically only, mind you) to think that it could and should be.

 

[Soundproof]

From the first post - so sad:

Today, one of my a'phile friends commented to me that this is his 40th year in the hobby and he still wasn't really that happy with the sound he was getting.

Imagine doing anything for 40 years and remaining dissatisfied.

 

[treitz3]

Good point.

 

[Johnny Vinyl]

Good point indeed!

I understand the limitations I am faced with and have accepted them. This allowed me to relax and free my mind to enjoy what is my circumstance. I don't fret about anything, I don't long for anything, I don't worry or concern myself with What's Best, I just enjoy what I am lucky enough to have.

 

[Mike Lavigne]

Boy did you misread my post! My point was that 24/96 PCM digital done right should equal or better any existing analog recording format, but doesn't. It's not transparent, even though there is every reason (theoretically only, mind you) to think that it could and should be.

i disagree that there is every reason to think that theoretically 96/24 could surpass analog tape. it should not equal or better analog tape. dsd does not even do that. it's not the execution that is the problem; it's the idea and the technology of PCM that is lacking.

what causes you to think that 96/24 PCM should better analog?

when there becomes a market demand that will reward a digital format for bettering analog it will happen. but i cannot envision John Q. Public caring enough for that to happen anytime soon.

i will agree that we don't have a crystal ball and cannot know what form better digital might take in the future. could it still be PCM? nothing i've heard would lead to that conclusion.

 

[rbbert]

i disagree that there is every reason to think that theoretically 96/24 could surpass analog tape. it should not equal or better analog tape. dsd does not even do that. it's not the execution that is the problem; it's the idea and the technology of PCM that is lacking.

what causes you to think that 96/24 PCM should better analog?

when there becomes a market demand that will reward a digital format for bettering analog it will happen. but i cannot envision John Q. Public caring enough for that to happen anytime soon.

I thought that was clear from my original post. Magnetic tape is a slurry of iron oxide particles bonded to a plastic backing. In analog tape recording, the record head's magnetic flux orients the tape's iron oxide particles into a particular orientation producing a magnetic field which can then be mirrored by the playback head into an approximation of the original input signal. It's roughly identical to what an ADC does; using a digital algorithm rather than a magnetic field, it moves "particles" (i.e. digital data points) into a particular orientation that is then mirrored by the DAC into an approximation of the input signal. The difference is that in 24-bit PCM there are many more "particles" (in a unit of time) to store the data than there are in magnetic tape. So if we were doing this ADC > DAC thing correctly, 24/96 PCM digital should result in a better reconstruction of the original input signal than "analog" magnetic tape.

 

[Johnny Vinyl]

Once again this bandwagon is veering way off course.

 

[rbbert]

Remember that a primary goal in producing better magnetic tape is making the particles smaller and more uniform, and/or making the particles themselves of a slightly different material that might respond more quickly to changing magnetic flux and hold their subsequent orientation better. Well, PCM digital already has that particular aspect of the storage problem pretty well solved (small uniform particles that respond very quickly and hold their subsequent configuration very well), so it would seem that it's the ADC>DAC process which needs work.

 

[Mike Lavigne]

Remember that a primary goal in producing better magnetic tape is making the particles smaller and more uniform, and/or making the particles themselves of a slightly different material that might respond more quickly to changing magnetic flux and hold their subsequent orientation better. Well, PCM digital already has that particular aspect of the storage problem pretty well solved (small uniform particles that respond very quickly and hold their subsequent configuration very well), so it would seem that it's the ADC>DAC process which needs work.

i do acknowledge i did mis-read your post to a degree in that i was originally commenting on the current state of 96/24 PCM, and not the theoretical potential as your post mentioned. i did not want to ignore your point about that.

i still don't see much room for the electronics or software to improve PCM beyond it's current state. what needs work is getting the money guys to provide funding for better digital formats. but i'm skeptical about that.

 

[rbbert]

i do acknowledge i did mis-read your post to a degree in that i was originally commenting on the current state of 96/24 PCM, and not the theoretical potential as your post mentioned. i did not want to ignore your point about that.

i still don't see much room for the electronics or software to improve PCM beyond it's current state. what needs work is getting the money guys to provide funding for better digital formats. but i'm skeptical about that.

You seem to regard PCM or DSD digital as fatally flawed, whereas I see analog recording as fatally flawed. No matter how you make an analog recording you are faced with limitations of the physical size of the smallest particles of your substrate (magnetic tape); with digital you can really go right down to atomic size, many orders of magnitude more resolving. I don't see how that can't be potentially better.

Despite your pessimism, there are some engineers working to improve our digital recording; DXD, 32/384 PCM, 5.6 MHz and higher DSD all come to mind. I suspect (hope?) someone will eventually get it right (soon would be better)